


Heaven isn't too far (heaven is where you are)

by Beleriandings



Series: And up and down, and fast and slow [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (somewhat) established relationship, Astrophysics, Dancing, Gen, Irredeemably Sappy, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, Scientific Accuracy, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 01:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: The summer after the Apocalypse, Aziraphale and Crowley go on holiday. To space, naturally. Because after all that's happened, what's one more completely unprecedented and possibly unwise idea, here or there?





	Heaven isn't too far (heaven is where you are)

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I fixed the footnotes. They work now!

It began, as new and exciting things occasionally do, in the middle of a lake. Specifically, the Serpentine in Hyde Park, a name which Crowley very much enjoyed on principle.

The summer after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t had been long and hot, seeming to stretch languorously into forever. And perhaps the heat had got to the two of them, because in a near-unprecedented variation on Crowley and Aziraphale’s usual routine of walking in St James, today they had gone the extra not-even-a-mile and ventured past Marble Arch. (Then again, a lot of things had changed for the two of them lately, this the least of them.)

They had wound their way past the edge of Knightsbridge and to the park—half-cautious out of old habit as they linked arms—eaten ice cream from the overpriced little kiosk, and then hired one of the rowboats.

And after a pleasant picnic, they had simply floated in the middle of the shallow lake under the hot sun. Aziraphale was reading from under the brim of an early-twentieth century straw boater, and Crowley trailed his hand in the water, lazily befriending every curious duck that had swum past, before giving in to the pleasant self-temptation of leaning against the angel’s side and dozing off intermittently in the mid-afternoon.[1]

It had been a perfectly wonderful day, but now the sky had started to turn pink with the sunset, the tourists gradually ebbing away from the park and the boating lake emptying of everyone else but them.

And that was when Aziraphale spoke, suddenly.

“…Crowley? What if we…went somewhere?”

“Hnn?” Crowley lifted his head up; he had almost been asleep again, head pillowed on Aziraphale’s lap as their boat did another lap of the island, to the faint sound of angry swans. “What?”

Even in the evening, the air was still thick and warm as soup, the whole world soaked in the buzzing petrol fume heat of a London summer day. Crowley blinked a couple of times, sitting up to look at Aziraphale, who had put his book down and was looking back at him, rather intently.[2]

“I, I mean…” said Aziraphale, “wouldn’t it be nice to get out of the city for a while?” He hesitated, laying a tentative hand on top of Crowley’s. “I mean, we can…in a manner of speaking, I suppose, do whatever we want now.”

“We can” agreed Crowley. It was still sinking in, that the two of them had been granted this… reprieve, of sorts, by their respective head offices. It was even more still sinking in that this included and was not limited to, well…whatever they had been doing for the last few weeks, ever since that first day of the rest of their lives.

The thing was… the thing _was_. This _something_ between them had existed so long that they had almost forgotten that putting a name to things like this was usually the done thing, at least for humans. For beings like them…well, they had nothing to compare to, but themselves. This thing, that had not changed _qualitatively_ , per se, but as of extremely recently, involved putting hands on the backs of one another’s, leaning closer together. Kisses, sometimes, and staying the nights at either Crowley’s flat or the bookshop. Incoherent and roundabout confessions-by-increments as they both struggled with all the things they had avoided saying, the things they had been sweeping under the carpet of the Arrangement all these years. Fitting themselves into each others’ lives, and realising that, _oh_ , there was already a space there, old and familiar as the well-worn sofa in the bookshop on which Crowley so liked to nap in the afternoons.

The word _love_ had even come up, once or twice, as though to see how it fit. Humans might call it _love_ , and certainly Crowley loved Aziraphale—in a fierce, defiant sort of way that said to the generalised cosmos, _look! I can and will love, I choose this, I choose him, every time—_ and likewise he knew down to his bones and the ever-burning brightness of his raw form beneath that Aziraphale loved him, was not sure why he had ever doubted that.

He had doubted a lot of things in the past though; a lot of things were different now. But it was so much more than that; love in the human sense seemed a small thing, confined to the order of a few decades at most. Simultaneously so much and not enough to describe what was between them.

It was a process. Crowley tilted his head, letting the glasses slip down his nose just a little. He swallowed, thinking about how he’d go anywhere that Aziraphale wanted. They could go to trawl through the wheelie bins outside Hammersmith tube station[3]and Crowley would call it a good holiday, so long as Aziraphale was with him. “Where were you thinking?”

“…I thought I’d let you decide.”

“You were the one who suggested it, angel!”

“Well, yes, but. Still.”

Crowley thought for a moment, trying to think of somewhere they hadn’t been before. “…Well….It’s only…hmm, about sixty-two miles to space.” He said, thoughtfully. “That’s closer than…” he thought for a moment, “the South Downs. Give or take. You just have to drive straight upwards instead. Or!” he brightened, as the thought occurred to him. “We could go a bit further. Geostationary orbit! Lovely view. Of, you know, everything. Home in time for tea.”

Aziraphale blinked, looking slightly alarmed but badly trying to hide it. He took off his hat and toyed with the ribbon. “I mean… I suppose I do owe you a trip to space. Seeing as we had that dreadful Thing about it, back then.”

Crowley winced at the memory. “…We don’t have to.”

“No! No, no no, I mean…” stammered Aziraphale, reaching out and squeezing Crowley’s hand. He took a deep breath, looked him straight in the eye, glasses be damned; nobody else did that, and it was incredibly disarming every time. “Crowley, I’m always the one who suggests things. I go somewhere, get myself into trouble usually…” he looked a little abashed, “and then you’re there. I feel as though you don’t get much choice in the matter. And, yes, but I was thinking of…I don’t know. Cornwall, or somewhere, when I suggested it. Walking in the South Downs. But I… I’m ready now, to go anywhere you want to go. I’m ready to catch up with you.”

 _You go too fast for me Crowley_ rang in his ears, words decades old. He hesitated, hearing the note of nervousness in Aziraphale’s voice, a sort of verbal sidestep. He recognised it immediately, because he had also been taking part in this type of conversational footwork a lot recently. “Mmph. Would you _like_ to go to Cornwall?”

His eyes came up to meet Crowley’s. “I…wouldn’t mind” he said slowly. “But…Crowley, the way you talked, before…” he gestured. “Space. I do want to see it. With you. I mean...” he flushed, less articulate than Crowley had probably ever heard him before, in a way that made Crowley’s heart feel like it was making a desperate bid for freedom directly out of the front of his chest. It definitely took some getting used to, whatever it was that was now between them. It was, Crowley thought, like when you keep a shiny pebble in your pocket. You don’t take it out, you just hold it there, turning it over and over until your hand knows the shape of it. But when you do take it out, it’s covered in spots, or river-smoothed strata, or fossils of ancient creatures placed there to mislead the humans. Or somesuch. He wasn’t the best at metaphors at the best of times, and he was even worse at them when Aziraphale was standing so close to him. “I mean” continued Aziraphale—who seemed to have collected himself slightly—turning Crowley’s hand over gently between the two of his, making Crowley’s brain short-circuit like an iPhone falling out of a pocket into a duckpond. “…I _mean_ , Crowley, I know that before I said no. Twice. I had good reason to. But…I think if there had been no hope, none at all, I would have said yes, if you’d asked me once more.”

“You…you would have?”

“….Yes. No…I don’t know. Maybe?” He looked around helplessly, as though for inspiration. “I couldn’t just _leave_ , Crowley. You understand that, don’t you?”

Crowley sighed. “Yeah” he said. “I s’pose I do.” He did, was the thing. He loved earth too, and he had only suggested it because he thought there was no other option. But Aziraphale was still clearly anxious about the whole thing, the weight of their fight—long forgiven, obviously—still heavy on him. Crowley sighed, taking Aziraphale’s hand in both of his in his turn, kissing the ball of the thumb— _revenge—_ and being rewarded by a soft sort of sound Aziraphale made in the back of his throat. “Angel, that was the most long-winded way to say you’ll go on holiday with me that I’ve _ever_ heard.”

Aziraphale arched an eyebrow at him, pursing his lips, glib as you please. “As a matter or interest, has anyone _else_ ever told you such a thing? Anyone but me? Have you ever asked?”[4]

“Shut up” said Crowley, flushing in a deeply un-demonic way, kissing Aziraphale’s wrist in part to hide it. He felt bright anticipation crawl up his spine. Aziraphale would love it so much; he would make sure of that. “You know there’s never been anyone else but you.”

* * *

And that was how it had started, and after a few days, they were ready to leave. Crowley had already seen to his plants; he really taken the time and given them a good talking to, about not slacking in their growth while he was gone, and how if they had the audacity to _die_ without his permission they knew what the consequences would be. Aziraphale, improbably, had packed the 1890s gramophone from the bookshop. It and a stack of records were wedged into the backseat of the Bentley, next to the picnic basket and the equally improbably wine cooler.

Now they had officially left. Crowley, of course, was driving, and Aziraphale was sitting in the passenger seat, seatbelt fastened,[5] clutching Crowley’s _Extremely Big Book of Astronomy_ like it was the London A-Z and they were off to a dinner party in the uncharted suburban depths of Bexleyheath.

Except, of course, for the fact that they were travelling directly upwards, the ground receding behind them as they began to break into the stratosphere. Aziraphale was flipping through the book, to pass the time, as Crowley whistled tunelessly along to _Don’t Stop Me Now_.

“Where did you get this book, anyway?” said Aziraphale, curiously. He sounded a little proud. “I wasn’t aware you had a single one in that flat of yours.”

“I have _this_ one” said Crowley, knowing that if he encouraged Aziraphale even a little bit his whole flat would soon be full of books, and, even more disquietingly, realising he was not wholly opposed to the prospect. Their two lives had already begun merging into one, and he supposed it was not a reversible process. “I got it from my friend Brian. It was a graduation present. Well. It was _his_ graduation. But he did give me this as a present.”

“Brian?” Aziraphale was pouting slightly. “Graduation?” he looked so nonplussed at the prospect of their being some large aspect of Crowley’s life he didn’t know about; it was exceptionally endearing.

“Brian May” clarified Crowley. “Formerly of _Queen_?” He nodded in the general direction of the dashboard, rolled his eyes as Aziraphale looked blank. “Doctor Brian May now, I should say. PhD in astrophysics, Imperial College, 2007. _A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud_.[6] He gave me this as thanks for a… helping hand I offered, shall we say.”[7]

“I see” said Aziraphale, though it was clear he didn’t. “Well, tell him thank you when you next have the chance.” Aziraphale had put on his tiny, ancient, and painfully useless glasses on, and was poring over the book, a page of notes tucked into it. “Now, I made a little itinerary, just in case we forget…”

“I thought the plan was to go visit the sun first, then work our way outwards?” They were passing into low-earth orbit now; a chunk of broken-up telecom satellite cladding the size of a frisbee drifted past at a few kilometres per second—fast even by his standards—but it was easy enough to imagine it diverting its path further out into space and away from the Bentley.

“That’s the general plan, yes, but I’ve been doing a little research …we’ll have to do a certain amount of orbital manoeuvring if we want to visit all of them. Actually, this stuff is fascinating Crowley! Did you know, those clever humans worked out you can get a gravitational “kick” when going past a planet, or some such large object? That’s how they get their spacecraft to the right place. Anyway, I know we won’t need to bother with that kind of thing, but I did make a quick trip to the British Library to check the most current edition of the _Nautical Almanac_ , and took the liberty of making a few sketches of where all the planets are currently located on their orbits with respect to each other. I also did a few calculations of trajectories and such...”

“Mmm” said Crowley, taking a hand off the wheel to take the folded pencil sketches he was offered. Even Crowley didn’t have it in the depths of his demonic heart to tell Aziraphale that he had an app on his phone that could do the exact same thing instantly. But, to Aziraphale’s credit, he seemed to have got all the outer planets more or less in the right place, and he had been thorough with the cometary orbits, even from a quick glance. There were minute annotations in Aziraphale’s impeccable copperplate handwriting, elevations and orbital eccentricities and all the sorts of things that normally fell firmly under Crowley’s policy of just winging it. There was even a neat little recommended route traced out in dotted lines, with stopping points at all the major planets and the recommended orbital manoeuvres required at each point, the non-application of physics to the two of them a moot point.

And there was that feeling in Crowley’s chest again; once more, Aziraphale had shown that fundamental aspect of himself, where, though he might at first express doubt or hesitance, once Crowley had convinced him of a course of action he was simply _all in_ , heart and soul, and maybe, in hindsight, he had only needed the littlest of nudges in the first place. It was the way things had been for them for millennia, and Crowley felt an upwelling sense of…relief? Joy, perhaps? in the notion that the more things—between them, for the world—changed, the more Aziraphale stayed the same. And just as well, really; he didn’t know what he would do, otherwise.

He grinned, smoothing out the notes on the car’s dashboard. “Am I mistaking things, or did you teach yourself orbital mechanics specifically for this holiday, in the last two days?”

Aziraphale tutted. “You were busy watering the plants at your flat. What else was I supposed to do? And besides, I already knew _some_ orbital mechanics!”

“…You did?”

“Well, I’d like to think that I didn’t waste the time I spent with that Newton fellow, though I was mostly supposed to be there to help inspire his theories of optical spectra, and celestial mechanics, and such.[8] Utterly dreadful conversationalist though, and so there wasn’t much else to do but read his books.” Aziraphale made a face. “I must say, I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of the _Principia_ though. I hate to say it, but Leibniz’s notation was much better.”

“Oh, much” said Crowley, who had in fact spent the late 1670s in Hanover with Leibniz and had to listen to him bitterly cursing _that poxy English bastard, plagiarising my work_ , an incident which only served to increase Crowley’s conviction that Hell barely needed him to sow discord anymore, and he may as well just pack up and go home. Admittedly, Leibniz’s notation _had_ been better, though.[9] Crowley had even helped with the integral sign.

And so, following Aziraphale’s pencilled map, they began on their journey. First stop: the sun.

This, Crowley thought, as the sound system began playing _39_ , was already on course to be the best holiday ever.

* * *

The sun, up close, was very very big, and very hot. Luckily, Aziraphale had miracled them both some sun cream—SPF +100000000, an unprecedented substance that did not and perhaps could not exist on earth—for their noses, and was dutifully wearing eclipse glasses. Crowley, who made a point of _only_ going without glasses while observing the sun during eclipses, was splitting the difference and contenting himself with his regular glasses, and the two of them were sitting on the roof of the Bentley, contentedly observing the few sunspot clusters that were visible today. 

“You know, it’s better if you just…” Crowley pressed his fingertip to his temple—a physical motion that was wholly unnecessary for what he wanted to accomplish, but looked what he would have described as _cool and sci-fi—_ and let his vision widen in frequency a little from the usual range visible to humans. Now the sun looked quite different; all loops and elegant twisting arcs of plasma where before there had only been dark spots, the slow-moving solar wind drifting out in waves from the enveloping corona, all aglow in the far ultraviolet.

He looked over at Aziraphale, who had apparently gathered what he was doing, and had done the same. “Oh! Goodness” he heard Aziraphale gasp, glowing slightly in the ultraviolet himself with excitement. He turned to look at Crowley, the faint pressure of the solar wind making the bright curls of his hair drift around his face. “It’s beautiful.”

Crowley smiled. “Yes,” he said, “yes, it is rather.”

* * *

The next stop on the list was Mercury.

There wasn’t much air here, but it was a nice sort of rock, hot to the touch here on the dayside. Hot enough to burn up a standard-issue human of course—as much as there was such a thing—full in the light of the blazing Sun in its close orbit. But it was a simple enough thing for the two of them, imagining that it was barely more than a pleasantly sunny day on the coast of Spain, and in fact Crowley rather liked it; it was nice to lie down on and nap in the sunshine, on the beach towel they had brought specifically for this purpose. He was almost comfortable enough to shift into his snake form, and just bask in it. Aziraphale had set up the gramophone—definitely not plugged into any source of power—on top of the Bentley, and set his ancient, crackly recording of Holst’s _The Planets_ [10] to play on the turntable. The appropriate movement of course. Perhaps a little cliché, but Crowley would allow it.

__

“Mercury!” said Crowley, gesturing expansively. Aziraphale came back and plopped himself down beside him on the beach towel, wearing the boater hat he had had on back in the park. “Named after the late, great Freddie Mercury, of course.”

“Crowley, I don’t think the planet was named after - ”

“’Course it was” insisted Crowley.

“Actually, I rather think it was named after the Roman messenger of the gods…you remember, in Rome, when - ”

“Nope. I mean, yes, I remember, but nope. Planet’s named after Freddie Mercury.”

“Since when?”

“Always has been. Alternatively, since…eh…the mid-nineties? I was having a Time, Angel.”

He watched, as the cogs in Aziraphale’s mind turned; he looked a little sympathetic. “Me, too” he acknowledged, shoulders drooping. “But Crowley, did you…?”

Crowley gave him a triumphant grin. “It’s what he deserves.”

“That’s as may be, but Crowley, you can’t just go around altering reality like that! And retroactively, too! Who knows what that sort of thing does to…you know, everything.”

“The other day you made it so that Whole Foods off Piccadilly Circus never stopped selling those pistachio cannoli you like. Not started selling them again. You edited time so that they never stopped.”

“Who told you about that?”

“No one, but you had a little bit of pistachio mascarpone cream on your cheek, for several hours. Just there.” He pointed, thinking about how he had multiple times been on the point of brushing it away, or gently pointing it out; he had been about to do it, too, but just then Aziraphale had brushed it away himself, without even realising. It had all been extremely frustrating. “What else was I to assume?”

He expected Aziraphale to continue arguing about it, but the angel blinked and let out a sigh. “Yes, well” he said, raising a hand to his face, as though in a cut-off motion to touch the spot he had pointed to. “Well, all that’s beside the point. And I suppose now it matters rather less, doesn’t it? And it’s not as if we _can_ change anything we want to.” He was frowning again, slightly. “Just little things.”

 _Just little things_. He couldn’t save Freddie, nor any of the other humans, in the end, but he could change little things. Only sometimes they did feel like very little things. “…Hey.” Crowley nudged Aziraphale. He could feel himself about to say something dreadfully sappy, and he would prefer to get it over with. “At least there’s the future. They can’t stop us from changing that.”

“That is rather how causality is meant to work, yes.”

“What I mean is that… oh, you know. We can make it together, angel. And all that.”

Aziraphale took his arm, giving him the tiny soft smile he reserved just for occasions when Crowley gritted his teeth and said something sappy. “Oh, don’t worry. I plan to.”

* * *

The next leg of their journey found them in a pleasant orbit above the top of Venus’ upper cloud layers, and already they had begun to smell a hint of sulphur dioxide. They winds were roaring down below, the upper atmosphere a sickly yellow. Here and there, there was a flicker of faint lightning from amidst the cloud layers.

“Well, you said you particularly wanted to come to Venus” said Crowley. “Is it everything you imagined?”

“Hmm. Well” said Aziraphale, diplomatically, squinting at the book. “First of all, I think Holst was somewhat off the mark, calling this one the bringer of peace…”

“Yeah. Yeah, good old Holst didn’t have much of a grasp of what it was actually like out here, that’s for sure…” 

“Mmm.” Aziraphale hesitated, clearly trying to decide whether to speak his mind or not. “I was, hmm. I was imagining it as more…” he gestured vaguely. “Well, it looks so… pastel in the pictures, all soft like sunsets, and I had thought it might be slightly more - ”

Crowley raised his eyebrows; Aziraphale had turned a little pink across the cheeks and nose. “What? Out with it, angel.”

“You know. Venus in the sense of Botticelli.”

“…Naked and riding a seashell? I don’t understand, angel.”

“Venus in the sense of the Roman goddess.”

“Um.”

“I wanted to come here with you, Crowley.”

Crowley blinked, slowly.

“A little more romantic!” Aziraphale blurted out, immediately going red. Crowley was immediately struck to the heart, at the prospect of Aziraphale going all pink and blushy when he talked about places being romantic, let alone places he was planning to go with Crowley himself. Not that he hadn’t had his moments thinking about the relative romanticism of places he and Aziraphale had found themselves in over the years, but the notion of speaking about such things still seemed like a forbidden thing, that he himself had blocked off in its own little mental lockbox.

Mentally, Crowley took a deep breath,[11] turning to face Aziraphale in the passenger’s seat. “…Lean forward, angel.”

Aziraphale did, leaning across the gearbox to where Crowley was, and Crowley took the chance and leaned forward too, giving him a swift, sound kiss. The look on Aziraphale’s face when he pulled back a moment later was absolutely priceless.

“There, angel. Romantic enough for – _ghck!_ ”

He let out a quickly-silenced and slightly embarrassing noise himself, as Aziraphale leaned in again, kissing the incipient teasing from his lips. A kiss which, after a moment, he enthusiastically returned.

They pulled back a few moments later, both rather blushing now. They were still very, very new at this.

“In answer to your question” said Aziraphale, rather primly, “yes, though I’m very willing to broaden my experience in this area.”

“Let’s carry on to Mars, then” said Crowley, clearing his throat. His voice was slightly huskier than usual, and he could feel the blush heating his cheeks. _Embarrassing_. “I’ve always thought it was nicer than Venus, anyway.” 

* * *

Mars was indeed lovely this time of year.

There must have been a global dust storm recently, Crowley thought, the air still hazy red with it. He felt a moment of sympathy for the poor rovers that had had to weather their way through it; ever since humans had started putting them up here, he had always had an unfortunate soft spot for the things.[12]

The redness had the effect of drawing the red out of the sun in the sky, making it appear a delicate grey-blue circle, especially at sunset. Crowley wondered, not for the first time, whether if humans had been set loose on Mars, rather than on earth, whether they’d all be describing things as “sun-blue” rather than “sky-blue”. Like Aziraphale’s eyes. They were, Crowley decided, Martian sunset blue. One of Crowley’s most firmly-held principles was that he would never sink to the level of writing poetry, but if he were to one day break with that and-

His thoughts were broken off by Aziraphale sneezing, a moment before he set the gramophone’s needle down and Holst’s _Mars_ began to play, a staccato rhythm.

Crowley strode over to him, peering over his shoulder. “Okay over here, angel?”

Aziraphale looked into his eyes. _Sun-blue_ , Crowley thought helplessly. “Just fine.”

Dust storms did make for beautiful sunsets afterwards. They watched the Sun set, ghostly pale, smaller than it was from earth, over the lip of the Schiaparelli crater, lying down on the tartan picnic blanket that permanently lived in the boot of the Bentley these days. Mars dust was awfully fine and clingy, but fortunately, Aziraphale was maintaining a low-level miracle to keep it from caking on their clothes and into their hair, not to mention getting in the picnic spread. 

It had been a beautiful day, but now it was time to move on. Phobos had begun to shine bright in the sky with the sunset, and now Deimos was cresting the horizon, as they packed up their things.

But, Crowley thought, as he started the car, there would be many other such to come.

* * *

“Crowley? Can I ask you a question?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Have you come here….often?” asked Aziraphale over the strains of _Radio Ga Ga_ , as they sailed past another average-looking asteroid. “Space, I mean.”

Crowley cast him a Look under his lashes, and also over his sunglasses that had slipped down his nose enough to do so at just that moment. “…are you really using _so, you come here often_ on me? Didn’t think you were one for bad pick-up lines, angel…and anyway, I would have thought the more obvious one did it hurt when you fell from - ”

“Oh, hush, you know what I meant” said Aziraphale, rolling his eyes, but there was a smile in it. That smile said _I don’t need to use cheesy lines to pick you up and we both know it_ , and Crowley found himself agreeing. Yet there was also a note of uncertain worry in Aziraphale’s voice, which was at least more familiar territory. “Only, you seem to know it very well up here, but you never mentioned…anything.”

Crowley shrugged, with a languidness rightly impossible for someone with the standard number of human bones. “Occasionally, I would leave the earth for a while.” He gestured. “I’m surprised you never did. Didn’t it ever get stifling to you?”

Aziraphale was frowning. “Not the earth. I mean. No, not really?”

“Oh, no I should have made it clear. I didn’t mean the earth either, per se. Just…” he waved his hand vaguely in front of him. “The whole _thing_.” He gave Aziraphale another Look, and this time their gazes caught; Crowley found he had not adequately prepared himself for the tenderness in the gaze he was being subjected to. “ _Not_ ….let me make it clear, not the thing _we_ had. Have. Not you” he said, hastily. The words were hard to get out, even now. Six millennia of carefully training oneself to keep them in will do that to a person. “It was never because of _that_. But, you know. One takes holidays. Where one’s bosses won’t find them.”

“…Did you ever think of not going back?”

This line of discussion had become too serious too quickly, Crowley thought, wondering how to reverse out of this particular conversational alleyway. Though maybe that was just how things were going to be now. He steered a neat path around an upcoming conglomeration of rocky debris, reminding himself there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. “I did think of it” he admitted. “But, you…mmph…” he struggled to put the enormity of his feelings into words. He had always been the one tied to Aziraphale like a wandering asteroid, his solid centre of rotation no matter how far his orbital ellipse may carry him. “… _you,_ ” he finished lamely. “ _You_ were on earth, is the thing.”

He watched, fascinated, as Aziraphale embarked with quite adventurous spirit upon a full fifteen-second face journey. “Oh, Crowley, that’s - ”

But the rest of his sentence was lost, as in that moment, everything exploded.

The thing about space, as has been noted, is that in it, things tend to operate on a different scale than the ones usually encountered on earth. More specifically, a larger one. This goes doubly for space-based collisions; a collision on an earthly (or mostly earthly) motorway, such as, for instance, the M25, between two vehicles travelling at typical speed in opposite directions is a terrible thing, with potentially disastrous consequences for all involved. However, in such a collision, the highest speeds usually reached theoretically don’t far exceed the UK national speed limit of 70mph for dual carriageways and motorways. Or rather, they do, but most people tend to stay within the realms of the same order of magnitude if only because their cars simply can’t go any faster. Crowley, of course, scoffed at such petty limitations as the physics of the internal combustion engine, and in space doubly so.

And besides, the asteroid belt is no ordinary ring road. The orbital traffic of space detritus here clips along at, on average, a brisk twenty-five kilometres per second. Crowley, at this moment, was using the orbital momentum to swing them around to the other side of the sun, while using the car’s engine and the power of wishing for it to tack through the stream crosswise through the orbital ring of asteroids, as it were, at an approximately seventy-five degree angle.

And so, it was hard to see objects coming at the best of times. The blasted things just crept up on you so quickly – more specifically, at about twenty-five kilometres per second – and when one was distracted by the face of one’s beloved reacting to an emotional confession, then it may be assumed to pose even more of a problem.

To indulge, for a moment, in some physics: the kinetic energy released by a collision is proportional to the square of the velocity. Which means that the same two objects – and this asteroid, quite by coincidence, happened to have almost exactly the same mass as an Ikea lorry on its way back to Brent Cross - colliding at twice the speed with produce four times the energy, and at ten times the speed, a hundred times the energy, and so on and so forth, and by the time one reached the disparity in speeds between the speed limit on the M25 and the typical orbital velocity in the asteroid belt, one was looking at approximately six hundred and thirty-eight thousand times the energy, enough to blast a normal car, containing two normal people and a normal cassette player and picnic basket and tartan blanket and a gramophone on the back seat, and everything else that was in the car, to plasma and superheated fragments that would eventually cool and then drift forever in the vacuum of space, perhaps causing no end of headscratching for human explorers sent to see what went on up here one day in the future. Or perhaps, to coalesce eventually into a new asteroid, under the constant clumping effect of gravity.

Such is the cost of love, and also the reason why it’s important to always watch the road when out for a pleasant driving holiday in the asteroid belt with the object of one’s affection.

Luckily for them, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley were ordinary humans. Nor were they slow to react to the threat of imminent discorporation, after the time they had had on earth, and specifically recently. And so, a fraction of a second after the asteroid hit the driver’s door of the Bentley, Crowley was reacting, wishing that what was left exploded harmlessly around the car. 

Light flared all around them, superheated plasma bursting in a perfect, silent orb into the vacuum of space around the Bentley, as the asteroid they had hit was instantly broken into fragments that ricocheted backwards at a physically improbable angle. However, due to Crowley’s understandable distraction, it was a fraction of a second too late; the door had already bowed in, the handle breaking off and spinning away into space. Not to mention, the glancing angle of the collision had set the Bentley rolling like a rock tumbler on its axis.

The door swung wide, and Crowley, halfway through yelping in pain and alarm as the door collided with his side, lost his balance in the seat, tumbling out of the open door. The centrifugal force, laughing in the face of every highschool physics teacher calling it fictitious, flung him outwards before you could say _every action has an equal and opposite reaction_.

But before he could do anything, before he could grasp at the swinging door or throw open his wings or make any attempt to save himself, a hand was shooting out, grasping his wrist with a grip tight enough to bruise. Firm and warm, pulling him back into the car. He lifted his head, to meet Aziraphale’s gaze; he looked stricken, the edge of righteous fury that Crowley had only seen a handful of times coming clear to his face.

But more than that, he looked fierce, _dangerous_ , sparking and crackling with an incipient blinding halo that he couldn’t control sometimes, when things got desperate. Crowley was aware of it, the incandescent holiness of it crackling rather unpleasantly against his skin, setting his teeth on edge before Aziraphale forced it back down under control. He pulled Crowley back in and to his chest across the gear stick and just held him, in a fierce, warm embrace that went some of the way to crushing his ribcage. Luckily, there was no air here to bother breathing, and so he leaned into it, laying his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder as the spike of fear he had felt just now subsided, his heart rate returning slowly to normal.

Around them drifted a fine haze of hot asteroid dust, and behind him the door swung open, but he barely noticed any of it, as Aziraphale pressed his face into Crowley’s hair. “That” Aziraphale whispered there, clearly trying to sound stern but only sounding like he was being torn apart, “is why you wear your seatbelt.”

He was about to say something, when Aziraphale yelled in alarm, at something behind him. But when Crowley turned to look, there was nothing there, but the slight smell of heavenly ozone characteristic of when Aziraphale vanished something.

Aziraphale blew out a breath, lowering his hand. Slowly, his face was relaxing into something more familiar again, but he still looked anxious. And he was still half-holding onto Crowley. “See what I mean?”

Crowley couldn’t help it; he let out a small chuckle, which turned into a laugh. Stress response, he supposed; being discorporated here and now would be logistically messy, after all they had done, and there was no guarantee he’d be able to return. And leaving Aziraphale alone was not something he wanted.

Besides, seeing Aziraphale’s face a moment ago had certainly Awakened Something in him, that he would examine later. He wondered if this was how Aziraphale had felt every time Crowley had come to his aid over the millennia; if it was, then he understood why Aziraphale seemed so incapable of avoiding getting in those sorts of situations. He lifted his head to meet his eyes, going for nonchalance, with half-lidded eyes behind his glasses, which had slipped further down his nose. “Why would I need to” he replied, “when I have you to rescue me?”

Aziraphale blushed, leaning down and pressing a kiss into Crowley’s hair, holding on as though he’d never let him go. “Oh, stop it.” 

* * *

“Jupiter” declared Crowley, “is overrated. Big red spot’s the only tourist attraction it’s got going on, and you can see that from here.”

It was true; the spot was just cresting the day-night separator, lit at an oblique angle so the shadows stretched out across it, visible at this distance only with the preternaturally keen vision the two of them could summon when they wanted to. It was beautiful, but terribly overdone, Crowley had always thought. “I say, let’s skip it.”

“If you say so, Crowley dear” said Aziraphale absently. “Only, it says here we can see the aurora…I expect that will be better from off the planet though, won’t it?”

“It _is_ nice if you haven’t seen it before” said Crowley, wishing he had thought of this first. Their angle of elevation was too low to see much of the polar regions of Jupiter out of the opposite window of the Bentley.

“Well, I should like to do that, then.” Aziraphale paused for a moment, lowering the book. “What if we were to find a nice moon, and watch the aurora from there? We can also stop and heal your poor car’s door after that unfortunateness with the asteroid.”

Crowley nodded. “Yes, let’s do that.”

Presently, they came in sight of a small, yellowish looking moon. “What’s that one?” asked Aziraphale, looking up from the book spread across his knees. “Hmm…Jupiter system, Galilean moons - ”

“Excellent company, Galileo. …Did you know he never actually said _eppur si muove_? I added that one into the record later, after what he really said was struck from the proceedings. It was the kind of smart-arse thing he liked to say though, so he can have that one for free.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “What did he really say?”

“Well, I didn’t actually go to the trial. Consecrated ground, and all. But I’m told there was more Italian profanity in it than even _I_ knew at the time” he said, reminiscing fondly. “I wish I could have seen the looks on their faces!”

Aziraphale made that face he always made when he thought perhaps he should make a token effort at disapproval. Since the Apocalypse, it had become even less convincing than it had been before, Crowley was glad to note.

Crowley wrinkled his nose, sniffing the not-air. He winced, the smell of sulphur heavy and familiar even from this distance. “But. Hmm. Yeah, Galilean moons. That certainly is one.”

“That’s Io, isn’t it?” Aziraphale was squinting at the picture in the book.

“Yes. Er. Might want to avoid that one.”

“What?”

“That’s Io, innermost Galilean moon of Jupiter. Not really your kind of thing, probably. Not. Great for me, at this point, either.”

They were swinging around the little moon, and could make out a great volcanic plume there, absurdly large compared to the size of the little sphere suspended in Jupiter’s orbit. “What?” asked Aziraphale, crinkling up his brow in that endearingly worried way he had, when he sensed that anything, anything at all, was troubling Crowley. “What’s on Io?”

“Oh, Hell has an outpost there. The fire and brimstone aesthetic, et cetera…”

“Very imaginative.”

“My thoughts exactly.” He made a face. “They do employee team building retreats.”[13]

Aziraphale winced. “Hmm. Well, somewhere else it is, then?”

* * *

“ _This_ is more like what I had in mind” said Aziraphale. They were sitting near the pole of Ganymede, watching the great gas giant overhead, filling up the sky. The pole of Jupiter was lit with dancing light, a great circle inscribed about its crown. It moved and shifted, too slow to be dancing to Holst’s _Jupiter—_ playing on the gramophone behind them—but somehow, simultaneously in perfect time. It was throwing out light across the spectrum, and it was easy enough to widen their vision again outside of the range visible to humans, to watch it spark also in the infra-red, the ultraviolet and beyond.

Of course, he was somewhat distracted from the sight, by Aziraphale’s arm that was around his shoulders underneath the tartan blanket draped around both of them. It was cold here; the surface of Ganymede was frozen solid. The ice stretched out in every direction from the parked Bentley, as eerie as it was beautiful, lit by the brilliance of the giant planet’s aurora above.

“You know, it seems silly, now. That we didn’t do this sooner” said Aziraphale, wiggling a bit so that they were both more comfortable.

“Oh, I definitely agree” said Crowley, leaning into his touch. “But wasn’t it worth the wait?”

“Oh, certainly, it - ” Aziraphale broke off, staring downwards at the ice, which was shaking. A massive shadow was passing, deep below. “Crowley?!? What – ah, excuse me, but what, pray tell, the _fuck_ is that?”

As he spoke, a deep, ringing note felt through the icy surface all around them, singing through their very bones. A greeting, from something swimming far below.

“Oh, it’s just the whales that live out here” said Crowley. “Well. _I_ call them whales, even though they’re not, really. Humans don’t have a name for them. They’re a little surprise of Hers, I suppose, that they haven’t discovered yet.”

“O-oh…”

“They’re harmless, angel. Quite gentle, actually.”

“…I see” said Aziraphale, wonderingly, though he was still gripping Crowley’s arm rather tightly. “Are…are there a lot of other… things like this? Out there? Even I didn’t know about this.”

“Oh, masses of them” said Crowley, matter-of-factly. “Lots I don’t know about, either.” He gestured, at the general cosmos all around. Ganymede’s atmosphere was thin and tenuous, so aside from the slight airglow, they could see a dark sky full of stars, the Milky Way glimmering behind the vast sphere of Jupiter. “Out there, who knows what’s waiting.”

“You know, I’m coming to the conclusion that maybe you were right, back then” confessed Aziraphale. “Maybe She really does intend them to discover all manner of things that Heaven never accounted for. Maybe She did all along.”

It did not escape Crowley’s notice, that with the words, Aziraphale seemed to draw him closer again, into his arms. He could hear Aziraphale’s heartbeat—a bit of an affectation at the best of times—and he could hear it getting faster, as such once-unthinkable things passed between them.

“Now that” said Crowley, slightly overwhelmed, “was wonderfully heretical. Keep talking, angel. I think you’re right.”

“As long as you’ll keep listening.”

“Always.”

* * *

They had been moon-hopping in the Saturn system for several Saturnian days[14] now, and the picnic supplies they had brought from earth had quite run out. But now, they were finally skimming the planet’s rings, like a great, glimmering circular motorway before them, or, perhaps, a record on a turntable.

“Let’s stop here” said Aziraphale, staring wonderingly out the window. From their vantage point, the light of the Sun caught the rings at an angle, and they were close enough now to see the grain of them; they weren’t a flat plain like a record, not really. More like a shimmering tapestry of suspended crystalline points. Aziraphale turned to him, doubtful. “Can we…park…?”

“Of course.” He pulled up the Bentley just above the surface of the A-ring, or rather, what had looked like a surface from far away. This close, it was made up of many suspended lumps of ice, drifting gently in their slow, concentric orbital dance. And the way it glimmered in the sunlight... _frost on the windows of the bookshop on a chilly December morning_ sprang to mind.

He parallel parked neatly, off at the side of the Encke Gap. As soon as that, Aziraphale was opening the door, looking down at the surface in fascinated wonder, making Crowley’s heart tug a little in his chest.

Their feet just skimmed the surface of the rings, such as it was, each step kicking up the diamond sparkle to dance like the dust in a sunbeam. Here and there below the surface hung larger, more gravitationally-rounded pieces, lurking like driftwood in cloudy water. Around the great, arcing rim of the disk they were standing on, there was a little moon visible, making its way through the gap, leaving a wake behind it like the ducks swimming their leisurely rounds in St James’ Park. It was very beautiful, in a crisp and entirely unearthly way. Again, Crowley looked up at Aziraphale, blushing slightly when he saw him turn. “I think,” he said. He was blushing a little too, Crowley noticed, causing his own to intensify in sympathy. “I think this is the perfect place to stretch our wings.” 

He saw that Aziraphale had taken the gramophone out of the back seat and had set it on the car’s roof. But when the music began to play, it was not what Crowley had expected.

He raised an eyebrow. “Not Holst?”

“Not this time. Holst’s _Saturn_ doesn’t feel right, somehow…the bringer of old age. How dreary, in this beautiful place! And besides…” he extended a hand to Crowley, with a smile equal parts shy and wicked, “you can’t exactly dance to it.” Crowley actually felt his jaw drop, involuntarily, as Aziraphale’s wings burst into reality, brilliantly white in the chilly light of the distant sun and the reflected glow off the giant planet.

The music was a waltz. Shostakovich, he thought. Starting slow, but growing faster.

It was all he could do to take Aziraphale’s hand in his, his own wings unfurling behind him.

There is—as any hard science fiction fan will tell you, probably at great length—no sound in space. But this holds true only under the ordinary laws of physics, and as it was, the music seemed to follow where they led, drifting after them as they danced.

Not that either of them actually knew how to waltz, but then again, not knowing how to do things had never stopped either of them before, if they were determined enough; least of all lately. They each just made it so that, for this small moment, neither of them tripped. And, come to think of it, it wasn’t as though they needed to know the steps, when there was no ground below their feet anyway. Only the sparkling surface of Saturn’s rings, dusty ice transforming to crystal as they chased the orbital rotation of the rings, keeping pace with the sun’s light.

Now, here’s another question that may be added to the roster of those long debated by human philosophers, perhaps the natural sequel to the one about angels dancing on the head of a pin: how many angels and/or demons can dance on the rings of Saturn? But it would be a short debate for anyone in the know, because, like the first, it had a definitive answer: two, because no more or less than two had ever thought to try.

And yet, here they were. Here they were and the music was swelling around them, and Crowley dearly wished he had thought to miracle himself one of those elaborate, sweeping ball dresses that earlier centuries were so good at. But no matter; Aziraphale’s hand rested on his waist just so, just where it was meant to be, and his hand was on Aziraphale’s back like he had seen in the movies, and their other hands were joined, their wings stirring the suspended particles of the rings beneath their feet a little, feather-light touches as they passed over, drawn out into elegant wakes behind.

As the music ended, they leaned their foreheads together, beyond blushes at this point. It felt like complete, unshakable trust, as their lips brushed together. It felt like knowing and endlessness.

And everything, in that moment, was exactly as it should be.

* * *

And of course, some things, as they should, never changed.

“Hey Angel, what’s that planet coming up?” said Crowley, making a great effort to keep his face neutral.

Aziraphale, bless him, was having none of it; he actually gave a weary sigh. “It’s the seventh planet from the Sun, named after the Greek’s primordial father-figure _Ouranos_ , anglicised as _Uranus_ ” he said primly, pronouncing it in the entirely non-hilarious way.

Crowley grinned. “Don’t you mean - ”

“I meant what I said, Crowley.”

“ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” said Crowley.

“How on Earth- I mean, how are you saying that with your mouth?”

“Special demonic ability. But to return to my point, don’t you mean Ur _anus_ \- ”

Aziraphale was rolling his eyes. “My dear, I know you’re a demon but school children and astrophysicists alike have been running that one into the ground since the Herschels first discovered the thing, and, quite honestly, _you can do better_.”

“Aw.”

“Frankly, I suggest we skip it…oh, don’t look all sad like that. Fine, we can go there.”

Crowley sniggered. “Go where, angel?”

* * *

They did go to Uranus in the end, and, to his credit, Crowley didn’t make a joke about it _every_ single time. He did a lot of times, admittedly, but, in the end, Aziraphale seemed not to mind so very much.

* * *

They finished a bottle of whiskey on Neptune. They had already finished all the wine—except for one bottle of champagne, which they were saving—but the bottle of smoky Laphroaig seemed appropriate. Aziraphale had even brought their favourite cut-crystal tumblers from the bookshop, and Crowley had managed to hack some chunks of ice out of the planets surface, so they could drink it on the rocks. The peaty taste of it heated the back of his throat very pleasantly. It was very beautiful here, he had to admit; all icy-blue, thick cloud layers dimming the surface to a perpetual eerie twilight. It was very cold indeed, too. Crowley had never much preferred the ice giants for this exact reason: he didn’t do well in the cold, as a rule. The snake’s nature kicked in, and he found himself craving a heat-lamp. Luckily, though, Aziraphale was always warm, even in this icy place. The drunkenness was manifesting as a sort of impatient longing, a rolling pull that he couldn’t articulate just then.

They talked in stumbling, warm words, secret laughter under the dark blue sky on this cold world. They didn’t stay, long; there was a restlessness to both of them, knowing that soon, things would go back to the way they were, or wouldn’t, or both.

* * *

Still, restless or not, Crowley was determined to get the most out of this trip that he possibly could, seeing as he would remember it from now until eternity as the best holiday he had ever taken.

“Crowley, do we really have to take selfies with _every_ Kuiper belt object?”

“Yes, obviously. What kind of question is that?” Crowley grinned, brought his phone up to get the best angle to get Haumea in the background, as they drifted past. “Smile!”

Aziraphale gave a long-suffering sigh, as the flash flared bright in the darkness of space again. “Not as photogenic as Ceres, or Pluto” commented Aziraphale, fidgeting.

“Rude” said Crowley, but he had to agree; if he had spent a long time taking pictures of Aziraphale with Pluto’s heart behind his head like a cartoon halo, then at least no one else had to know about it. “What about Makemake?” he asked, diverting.

“I thought we already did that one.”

“So we did. Hmm…” the humans were discovering trans-Neptunian objects all the time now; the whole place was chock-a-block with wandering space-rocks of various sizes and things on weird highly-elliptical orbits, of course, but he was extremely proud of humanity for discovering them using just a few measly telescopes, all that way away. “What about Eris?”

“We did that one too. You tried all those Snapped Chat filters.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, okay, that’s probably most of the main ones. What do you want to do now, angel?”

Aziraphale hesitated, holding up his now rather dog-eared itinerary. “I didn’t plan anything else. I don’t know.”

Crowley squinted at him. “…Do you want to go home?”

“Do you?”

Crowley opened his mouth, and closed it again, gazing outwards into interstellar space. Out there, the Oort cloud, and beyond, well…everything. The two of them could go anywhere, do anything they wanted. It was intoxicating, this freedom, and for a moment, he wanted nothing more than to drag Aziraphale by the hand, to show him the whole universe and more.

Aziraphale took his hand, catching him by surprise. “The edge” he said, softly. “I think, I want to see the very edge of the solar system. Will you show it to me?”

Crowley closed his mouth, and nodded. “It’s not too far, now.” 

* * *

They sat on the roof of the Bentley, passing the last bottle of champagne between them in comfortable silence. Their hands, in the space between, were just touching, Aziraphale’s smallest finger draped over Crowley’s. The sun was at their backs, a mere dim pinprick of light that Crowley could barely feel out here at all, its warmth diminished by the vastness of the solar system. But beside him, he could feel Aziraphale’s glow, not wholly physical but present and ever-burning, bright and warm as he needed it to be.

Before them, stretching on endlessly, was the blackness of space, strewn with a patchwork of stars. Whole galaxies of them that human astronomers hadn’t come up with names for, spinning in their unceasing dance.

Something tugged in his chest.

Aziraphale, as though he could feel it – and maybe he could, thought Crowley, turned to look at him. “…Do you want to carry on?” he asked. He indicated the book. “There’s a lot further to go. We could explore the Oort cloud.”

Crowley took a thoughtful gulp of champagne, staring out into the bright-scattered dark. “Lots to see out there” he said, more to himself. “We could chase some comets.”

“I wouldn’t mind that.” Aziraphale’s tone was peaceable, and said, clearer than his words ever could, _I wouldn’t mind that, if it was with you_.

“Hmm.” Something else tugged in his chest, a different way than the first. He took a sip of champagne, the bubbles bright on his tongue. “I mean. We _could_ do that. Or we could turn around and, y’know…call it a day for now.”

Aziraphale looked at him, directly this time. Crowley passed him the bottle of champagne, and he accepted it, but didn’t drink yet. “I shouldn’t want to rush you back to Earth on account of me. The bookshop will wait. Home will still be there, now.” 

_Home_. He felt a twist of something in his chest, everything that earth was rolled up in a single word. Ducks and picnics, potholes in the road and those fancy new wind turbines they were putting in the Scottish borders. Jupiter’s aurora might be a more brilliant show of light than the Earth’s, but it didn’t typically come with the two of them dressed in dinner jackets, drinking champagne on the deck of the Titanic on a doomed night nearly a century past. Space was endless and beautiful, and the two of them could spend an age there, leaving behind their bodies like the clothes of bygone eras, dancing on the rings of every exoplanet, drifting gently in the stellar plasma winds. They could come back to the Earth they had saved, centuries later, and it would all be different. He curled his fingers, underneath Aziraphale’s. “Angel, I can’t - ”

But he broke off, as Aziraphale grabbed his arm, pointing outwards. “Look! What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Little gold flash! Over there!”

“Can’t be” said Crowley, as Aziraphale shoved the bottle into his hands, and began leafing through the book. “There’s just dust out there. Not even any comets nearby.” Not that he could think what kind of weird object would glint like that, as though it were made of metal. A very odd golden colour, too. “Is it a comet?”

“Let’s see…” Aziraphale took out the book, flipping through. “Hmm…could it be some kind of moon? But there aren’t any planets out here…”

But Crowley caught his non-breath, an illustration in the book grasping his attention. He stilled Aziraphale’s hands on the pages, laying his own on top so the book stayed open at the right page. “That’s no moon” he said, unable to hold back a grin.[15] When Aziraphale looked blank, he rolled his eyes, tapping impatiently at the page. “That. Look.”

Aziraphale looked at the page, in the last chapter of the book, which was about human space exploration. _Voyager_ , it said, the two spacecraft illustrated there, alongside a diagram of the golden record they carried, a message to anybody out there. They always were good at doing that. 

Crowley felt a smile cross his face, combined with a rush of affection. Then a grin, then he was laughing. “Ha! Well, I guess humans got here before we did.”

“They do tend to do that” said Aziraphale, hand coming to rest fully over Crowley’s. He looked _proud_ , as the little golden flash winked out, a pinprick of a reflection caught just for a moment in the faint sunlight. They had been lucky to catch that glimpse, he knew. “They’re really very clever that way.”

“Hmm” said Crowley, good-naturedly running a thumb across the back of Aziraphale’s hand. “Makes me think that maybe we should just…let them get on with it. They’ve already beaten us, after all. Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead, and go back to Earth. You know. For now.”

“That’s not like you to say.”

“I don’t think that’s the case.” He leaned in so that his head was on Aziraphale’s shoulder, letting the warmth of him seep into his bones, as Aziraphale’s arm came up to drape around his shoulders, leaning his head down to rest the side of his face against Crowley’s hair. And if there was a slight kiss there, then who was to say anything about it? “We’ve got as much time as we want. Let’s go home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, angel.”

“Crowley.”

He raised his head. Aziraphale’s face very close to his own, closing the gap between them, their lips brushing together very, very gently. Silent and gentle, in the dark at the very edge of the solar system. His lips tasted of champagne. “I think you’re absolutely right. Now, let’s go home.” 

And so, they made their way back through the solar system. And, because Crowley had been all this time maintaining a background level of time-manipulation[16], when they got back, they hadn’t been away that long.

In fact, they were home in time for tea.

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

[1] The attendant by the boats had, in fact, tried to hail them several times, having overstayed their time. But each time it happened, the poor man found himself having to wrangle several belligerent swans away from the pedalos, allowing the two a little more time to drift lazily around the island. The last time it had happened, the shrieks and the laughter of the onlooking children had woken Crowley up. He had looked at the swans, looked at Aziraphale, smiled knowingly to himself, and gone back to sleep. [↩]

[2] Though admittedly, there had been rather a lot of gazing intently between the two of them recently, or perhaps gazing with Intent. Or perhaps they always had, but recently it had merely become intentional intent gazing with Intent. Whatever it was, it was quite intense. [↩]

[3] They had, in fact, done this exact thing once, in 1981. Neither of them liked to talk about it. [↩]

[4]As a matter of fact they had not. When Crowley took a holiday it was almost always either alone, or with Aziraphale. But he had, in fact, been on holiday with someone other than Aziraphale on two separate occasions, neither of which he had enjoyed very much. Once, he had spent forty days and forty nights trailing around the desert with Jesus, but as holidays went, that one had been rather depressing: Crowley kept trying to convince the poor man to eat or drink something. He looked so tired and Crowley was getting worried about him. All in all, that one had barely counted as a holiday if he was being honest. The other time Crowley had been on holiday with someone other than Aziraphale was one of Hell’s compulsory employee team building retreats, which was, as is so often true for such things, an exceptionally dark time in his existence.[↩]

[5] Aziraphale had manifested them both seatbelts, complete with beige tartan seatbelt covers. Crowley allowed this to stand, though the angel was on thin ice. Nevertheless, Crowley was pointedly not wearing his; however much in love he may be, he still had an image to preserve.[↩]

[6]<https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/handle/10044/1/1333>[↩]

[7]He had also given Crowley one of his old guitars, which was currently stored in a special alcove in his Crowley’s flat, beside a suitable intimidated calathea.[↩]

[8]Aziraphale he had been very pleased to receive the dispatch to Cambridge, if only to get out of London for a while. After the Plague and the Great Fire of 1666, Aziraphale had found himself rather tired of the city and its constant upset—so much kept going _wrong_ , and he _knew_ it wasn’t Crowley who was responsible because Crowley wasn’t even there, and, he told himself, he didn’t _miss_ Crowley, thank you very much, no nothing like it. _Maybe you’re the one who misses him_ , he would have said, illogically. And if when he was in Cambridge, he used to spend a lot of time sitting under an apple tree, out of a sort of sentimental nostalgia and a far-fetched hope that maybe Crowley would appear there somehow, and if Newton gathered that this was something that helped the thinking along, and also took up the habit, and if an apple fell on his head once, then…well. History had entirely mangled the whole episode, but apples _had_ made contact with periwigged heads, and gravity _had_ been mathematically characterised at around the same time, was the thing.[↩]

[9]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculus_controversy>[↩]

[10]Performed by the London Philharmonic, 1926, and conducted by the composer himself.[↩]

[11]Only mentally, because what humans would refer to as “air”, was, out here, in short supply.[↩]

[12]Not that anyone else had to know, but occasionally, Crowley came up here to give Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity a little pat on the top of their cameras now and again. He thought it only fair, as, in a bit of an indirect way, they owed some of their presence and years of service here to him; just after the telescope had been invented, he had come up here and had a good deal of fun drawing some odd-looking straight-ish lines in the hopes that they would sow confusion for decades to come. He might have got a little carried away with the thing that looked plausibly like a human face in the right light and low resolution, Crowley thought in hindsight, but then again, it was the humans themselves that had run with it.[↩]

[13]As aforementioned, Crowley had, in fact, been to one of these retreats before. This was the source of both his experience with paintball and of his knowledge that sitting in a lake of boiling sulphur with one’s colleagues was an experience that was equal parts socially uncomfortable and unconscionably dull. There had also been an interactive masterclass on all the best tips and tricks for possession, which wasn’t really Crowley’s bag at the best of times; he found it dreadfully classless, not to mention uncomfortable, to possess humans, and he had had to sit through several interminable slideshows on it. In fact, the most he had got out of the week was seeing Hastur lose his contact lens in a sulphurous pool and have to search around for it for absolutely _ages_ , which was, admittedly, pretty funny.[↩]

[14]A Saturnian day is approximately 10 hours and 42 minutes. Shorter than you might guess.[↩]

[15]Crowley had wanted to have occasion to say that for quite some time.[↩]

[16]If asked, Crowley would have said that this was because he didn’t want to be away for years because his clothes would be out of fashion when he got back. Also, he would argue that he wanted to cut short the boring bits of interplanetary space without going fast enough to invoke annoying relativistic effects like time dilation. _Don’t talk to me about the twin paradox_ , Crowley would have said derisively, if asked. In reality though, it had more to do with ensuring that when they go back they would not have missed too much of the lives of their human friends back on earth. Because some things went too fast even for Crowley.[↩]

**Author's Note:**

> Some liner notes:
> 
> \- Having just got into the fandom (about a month ago I absolutely devoured the book at lightning speed, so that I could have read it before watching the TV series, then watched that too) I quickly realised favourite genre of Good Omens fic is “nice and highly historically accurate adventures of these two immortal idiots in [historical period of author’s choosing/intense special interest/area of actual academic study]”. And I desperately wanted to write one of my own, but unfortunately I’m an astrophysicist who doesn’t really have the confidence in my knowledge of history to attempt that at this point. So I started thinking “well, what would be my equivalent?” and…this was the result. (I am a solar physicist primarily, I work on the Sun’s magnetic field! But I’ve also done some research work and have a some background knowledge on planetary and solar system plasma stuff, so that’s definitely made it in here too. Also, coincidentally, this is probably my ideal holiday.)  
>   
> \- Please note that while I’ve tried to make this as scientifically accurate on the whole, in others I’ve played a little fast and loose with physics. Angels and demons not being wholly bound by it, and all. It’s mostly minor “cosmetic” details that help the plot along, such as kind of eyeballing the distances involved.…call it artistic license. (Except the thing about the asteroid belt…I actually did try to stick to realistic numbers for that.)  
>   
> -You go too fast for the author, Crowley, etc. by which I mean, holy shit I’m not dealing with relativistic effects in a sappy gay fanfic. (Hence footnote [16].) Not that I think they would be super significant in the context of the solar system, but if these two really were travelling at (say) normal spacecraft speed this wouldn’t be at all feasible in less than at least several decades. For comparison, the two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, and they’ve only just reached the edge of the solar system (however one chooses to define it) in the last few years. So yeah. Artistic license has been taken.  
>   
> \- Also, certain details (especially things about the rings of Saturn!) are still an active area of study! It’s very exciting! I can link you to academic literature on it if you want to know more!  
>   
> \- To be clear, we have no evidence that there is life on Ganymede, let alone very big whale things. Nor is it particularly likely. We do, however, know that there is a sub-surface ocean (as is the case on Europa and several other icy moons of the outer planets) and if there is to be life anywhere else in the solar system, those subsurface oceans seem like a pretty good candidate location. Or at least, that’s what people put on research grant applications in order to get funding to study those moons. I just think it would be cool if it was true, and that’s why it’s in this fic.  
>   
> \- If you have questions about the space stuff (or fandom stuff! Or any stuff!) please drop me a comment, or come chat on tumblr where I’m @kanafinwhy.  
>   
> \- The title of this fic is from the song [Let Me Be Your Wings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9dud8gFRT8), from Thumbelina. Because that scene where they dance around the pumpkin and it’s Saturn must have made a strong and lasting impression on me as a child, I guess.  
>   
> \- However, the piece they actually dance to in this fic is Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite No. 2 VI: Waltz 2, a concept lifted shamelessly from [one of my very favourite videos ever](https://vimeo.com/70532693). ...I watch this whenever I feel sad, and it fills me with Big Joy, so I just had to reference it (warning for people with photosensitive epilepsy though, it gets a bit flashy)  
>   
> \- Currently I'm writing up my PhD and I wrote most of this fic on my breaks/evenings/as a coping mechanism, and I'm Sure It Shows. Nevertheless, thanks for reading this deeply self-indulgent project....it means so much <3


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